Why Do We Care So Much What Other People Say?
It was mostly my mother and grandmother that voiced concerns about what people might say. Their words used to annoy me! The ‘people’ to whom our elders refer are their projections about the values and the opinions of the society.
When we trace back our feelings of worthlessness and humiliation we often find that they originate from the place where our family talked about such ‘people’. Next weekend, we will be holding a workshop in Dalyan, that will help us tackle the problem of valuing others’ opinions over our own needs and wishes, whereas in this article, I look into why we care so much what people might think.
One of the primary drives of human beings is to belong, to be understood, and to be loved. These needs can be met within healthy relationships. Research studies show that successful relationships are the most significant determinants of physical and mental health. This is because we need stimulus from our surroundings to define and make sense of ourselves. We believe that the more people care about, value, love, and believe in us, the more we will feel worthy, important, and lovable.
But does it really work like that? N0, it doesn’t. Naturally, our first experiences take place in the family and school environments where we grow up and begin to socialize. If those experiences make us feel worthless and inadequate, an unconscious process is triggered, which perpetuates the childhood self-image by devaluating others who care about and do value us.
Factors That Lighten The Worry About What People Would Think
On the other hand, if my brother admires me, I feel special. If my parents believe in me, I think I can make it. If they can support me in the face of failure without judging, I grow stronger emotionally and I can offset the effects of adverse environmental factors that I may encounter in life more easily.
Others’ opinions are also an environmental factor. If your first experiences are positive, what others think does not matter so much. Our sense of worth takes root with our interactions at that early age; we feel it inside. However, if we have felt insignificant and inadequate in our first experiences, we try not to let others see it and we hope the feeling of deficiency inside us will go away if others think the other way around. And of course, others’ unfavourable thoughts about us hurt us more as they coincide with our own negative feelings. It is because we, as human beings, want to avoid situations that hurt us, we care about others’ opinions of us and want to make sure they are positive.
Come and join me in one of my weekend workshops to reclaim the power to shape our life, that we’ve been allowing others to use so far. Phone today to book your place.
Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) image:tommy japan
